Being Right

I love being right, especially about someone else being wrong. I’ve been thinking about this since the election. As a former journalism major, I watched the news coverage with interest. Every day a panel would discuss their opinions, and they always knew they were right – until they were wrong. Now they’re scrambling to reimagine their biases and accuracies.

As we watched them squirm (sadly or delightfully, depending on your outlook), we were bombarded with I Told You Sos from people who just knew Trump would win.

The same conversations play out with OU’s losses to Houston and Ohio State, with the Dallas Cowboys, with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, with restaurants that make it or fail, with grades, with nearly anything that gets out there of any prominence or importance.

We like to predict successes and be correct. We like to predict failure and have called it.

What about being wrong? What if we were incorrect in our cynical outlook, in our expectations for failure, in our gloom in doom. What if the bad guys didn’t win? What if things turned out much better than I had expected?

I need to have a more humble outlook. I need to believe the best in others. I need to work less hard in being right all the time, and be more willing to be wrong. I need to check my opinions about EVERYTHING all the time, and listen to what other people think. I need to not give my critical reviews each second, but give others the benefit of the doubt.